`However long it takes’

CAMP DAVID, Md. – With Iraqi troops dug in around Baghdad, President Bush pledged Thursday to battle Saddam Hussein’s forces “however long it takes to win.” Bush and British war ally Tony Blair said the U.N. should help rebuild Iraq later, though an exact role was left uncertain.

The British prime minister, standing alongside Bush at the president’s mountaintop retreat, declared in words similar to Bush’s that “Saddam Hussein and his hateful regime will be removed from power.”

During their overnight meeting in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains, the leaders discussed conflicts in the Middle East as well as Iraq.

Strategy sessions about the Iraqi battle and postwar plans conjured up grainy images of a Camp David retreat 60 years ago, when President Roosevelt met Winston Churchill during World War II.

“For nearly a century, the United States and Great Britain have been allies in the defense of liberty,” Blair said. “We shared in a costly and heroic struggle against Nazism.”

The leaders asked the United Nations to restart its oil-for-food program, which fed about 60 percent of Iraq’s 22 million people until war shut off the flow.

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Bush and Blair refused to put a timetable on war, mindful that stiffer-than-expected resistance in southern Iraq and the looming battle for Baghdad could test the patience of their constituents and increase anti-war sentiment across the globe.

The fighting will last “however long it takes to win,” Bush said a day after declaring that fighting was far from over.

For months, the president avoided talk of how long and difficult the conflict could be as he tried to rally Americans against Saddam.

Looking tired on Thursday, the president bristled at news conference questions about the potential length of fighting.

“However long it takes. That’s the answer to your question, and that’s what you got to know,” he said.

Thumping his lectern, the president added, “This isn’t a matter of timetable, it’s a matter of victory. And the Iraqi people have got to know that, see. They got to know that they will be liberated and Saddam Hussein will be removed, no matter how long it takes.”

Joining the president in front of a field of British and American flags, Blair said he and Bush had decided to seek new U.N. resolutions on humanitarian relief, postwar plans for Iraq and a promise to keep Iraq’s territorial boundaries intact.